Like a tortoise crawling out of its burrow into the noonday sun, a short-term habitat conservation plan agreeable to all parties could see the light of day soon.

But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took criticism over whether there were really many of the endangered creatures left.

The latest workshop at the Bob Ruud Community Center last week attracted 40 people, drawing in representatives of developers like Focus Property Group, Concordia Homes of Southern Nevada, America West Homes and Hollis Harris Realty.

Nye County environmental specialist Mary Ellen Giampaoli said she could have a revised draft of the short-term plan available within two weeks. The participants were convinced not to scrap that plan entirely, in favor of waiting for a long-term agreement.

Bill Fisher, the former head of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Tonopah field office, now a private consultant, warned the penalties could be severe for violations of the Endangered Species Act, including jail time.

The desert tortoise was listed as endangered in 1990, yet there are few desert tortoise mitigation agreements on file with the Fish and Wildlife service for the Pahrump area.

Fish and Wildlife Service Biologist Jeri Krueger admitted the estimates of desert tortoise numbers involves an inexact science. It isn't like counting cows in a farmer's field.

She said the desert tortoise has a wide range of habitat and spends a lot of time burrowed underground.

"It's difficult to know how many tortoises are out there. If we don't know how many tortoises are out there, it's difficult for us to estimate what your take would be," Krueger said.

Long-time Pahrump resident and developer Hollis Harris said he hired a biologist along with Ray Wulfenstein, surveying 652 acres on the valley floor.

"About six people walked the fields back and forth -- not one tortoise was found," Harris said.

Fisher said he conducted a survey at the Ponderosa Dairy in Amargosa Valley once and didn't find any desert tortoises on 320 acres. During another survey of a 40 acre site where the Pahrump landfill sits on East Mesquite Avenue, he found only one burrow that had been used by a desert tortoise.

Julene Haworth, representing the Hafen family -- whose proposed Indian Roads subdivision sits in the higher habitat area which would require a mitigation fee of $550 per acre -- had asked if developers could be simply asked to stop construction if a desert tortoise was found and simply remove the animal. Krueger said there's no policy for quantifying the number of tortoises taken in the Fish and Wildlife Service policy.

Commissioner Butch Borasky and developer Tim Hafen renewed calls for a flat $250 per acre fee for both areas on the alluvial fan defined as desert tortoise habitat. Giampaoli felt that could be negotiated. She also felt there could be an exception waiving the fees for Nye County and public entities.

When Commissioner Peter Liakopoulos was told the plan had to be able to withstand a court challenge, he was told environmental groups could take the Fish and Wildlife Service to court for failing to protect the desert tortoise. But Liakopoulos suggested home builders could come up with a court challenge as well.

"If you're trying to deal with numbers of animals, that is extremely difficult," Fisher said. "All you can do is take a best guess at the amount of habitat you have, how much you're going to lose."

Commissioner Gary Hollis thought the Fish and Wildlife Service made a mistake listing the desert tortoise as endangered in the first place. He said the government didn't get baseline figures to show desert tortoise numbers before the animal was listed in 1990.

Fisher said biologists are currently conducting surveys of land transsects right now, but they will need seven years of data.

"In March 2006 we had a biological assessment of the water tank done of the area east of (Highway) 160 and 400 meters in every direction around it. Everything is zero, zero, zero, zero, and I want you to know that. So when people say there is take going on, there isn't take going on if there are no tortoises there," Tim Hafen said.

Mark Fiorentino, senior vice-president of government affairs for Focus Property Group, which has a development agreement with Nye County to build up to 5,800 homes around that water tank, said his company may be starting to build roads and infrastructure in the next year or two. Focus property is currently east of the boundaries of the plan, but Krueger said the map will probably be extended to the Clark County line and that area will probably be a high habitat area.

While the habitat conservation plan would be a blanket agreement that would allow 70 acres of development before the Fish and Wildlife Service would require developers to draft individual environmental impact statements, Giampaoli said a more realistic figure of needs based on updated 2007 planning figures may be 100 or 150 acres. She forecast a rush to the county office, by developers with large acreage requirements, to apply for that 70 acres.

Fiorentino concurred: "You're not going to protect anybody but the first person who applies."

The concern in rejecting the short-term plan was over having to return $275,000 in grant funds to complete it. Giampaoli said that plan has to be acceptable to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Krueger told Fiorentino other species would be included in the long-term, multi-species habitat conservation plan, birds like the Phenapepela, and the yellow-billed cuckoo and plants like the Parish phacelia and the Pahrump Valley buckwheat.

While developers and federal bureaucrats argued over implementation of the plan, Nevada District 36 Assemblyman Ed Goedhart reminded the crowd only 2 percent of the land in Nye County is privately owned.

"What the federal government does on 98 percent is going to have a lot more effect on the health and welfare of the species than concentrate on the 2 percent that is privately developed," Goedhart said.